Johan Floderus, an EU diplomat, has spent two years in an Iranian prison.
Authoritarian governments have learned they can trade Western humanitarian workers and journalists for convicted killers and intelligence agents.
The first time anybody realized Johan Floderus had been arrested was when he didn’t get off the plane.
The 33-year-old Swedish diplomat had arrived at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport to fly home after a week visiting friends in Iran. It took several days for his friends and family to work out he was in the feared Evin Prison — and more than a year before his arrest was made public.
Two years after his detention on April 17, 2022, Floderus — an employee of the EU’s diplomatic service — is still behind bars. Though he’s been accused of espionage, those familiar with his case say he’s more likely the latest example of Iran’s campaign of hostage diplomacy, in which Tehran arrests Westerners to exchange them for officials held in Europe for spying, terrorism or human rights violations.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Though he’s been accused of espionage, those familiar with his case say he’s more likely the latest example of Iran’s campaign of hostage diplomacy, in which Tehran arrests Westerners to exchange them for officials held in Europe for spying, terrorism or human rights violations.
Starting in 2018, Floderus worked for the EU supporting projects designed to help Afghan refugees arriving in Iran as the war between the Taliban and Western-backed government forces disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
After being quickly promoted through the bureaucracy, including a year and a half working in the Cabinet of EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, he was offered a posting with the EEAS which would see him split his time between Brussels and Kabul.
Making the case more challenging is the deterioration of relations between Iran and the West in the wake of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s hard-line Tehran policy, said Tarja Cronberg, a former Finnish government minister and expert on international diplomacy.
The practice of hostage diplomacy leaves Western governments in a bind — especially as realization grows among authoritarian countries that innocent foreigners like humanitarian workers and journalists can be arrested on trumped-up charges and then traded for convicted killers and intelligence assets.
Asked to clarify publicly whether Sweden might be prepared to exchange Floderus for Nouri, or any other Iranian prisoner, the country’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, told POLITICO the question wasn’t one for politicians to decide.
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